A Festa de Babette

This movie came aside as a shock in the eighties.Far from trends,that is to say in the heart of sincere creativity,Babettes gaestebud stands as one of the finest movies of its time.Stephane Audran,the wonderful actress of her ex-husband Claude Chabrol's greatest achievements (le boucher,la rupture,les noces rouges,all unqualified musts for movie buffs)gave a lifetime performance.To see her prepare with love and affection her meal is a feast for the eyes.All the people who saw this masterpiece actually tasted,ate Babette's culinary triumph. But the most moving part of the story is its conclusion:Babette was a great French chef,she was famous,now she found a new homeland but her heyday is behind her and she won't never be allowed to come back to her dear France.So the two old sisters do comfort her:In heaven,there will be huge kitchens where she'll cook for eternity.While sharing her fortune with her new friends,Babette changed their life,she gave them pleasure and a magic evening they would remember forever.In this simple but extraordinary screenplay,human warmth is everywhere,and I wish everybody a Babette's feast,would it be only for one starry night...

Stephane Audran is the eponymous heroine of this beautifully measured study of a small Danish community towards the end of the last century. Two beautiful and musically talented sisters give-up their own prospects of happiness and marriage in order to look-after their ageing father. One day, a French woman, Babette, comes to work for them. After some years she wins the lottery and is determined to do something for the sisters who have taken her in. Her solution is to prepare an exquisite and sumptuous feast, which changes the lives of all those invited. This is a film about human and cultural interaction, reflected in the changing language of the dialogue from Danish to French, and especially between the dutiful sobriety of Protestant northern Europe and the sensuousness of the Catholic south. It is also about human needs, and how warmth and kindness can be expressed and stimulated through the cultivation of the senses. A profoundly uplifting film.

It has started quietly. If your are looking for an action-packed movie this is absolutely not the right choice. All characters are slowly depicted on the scene. Stroke after stroke on the scene canvas. None can take away his hands to the priest and so the sisters lifespan devotion can only remain into the village. Philippa and Martina know their destiny, belong only to the village. So when you understand that, you are on the movie scene, in the village that becomes the whole known world in that time. When, no technology can let you imagine anything else than the campaign, the village, the sea. You feel the rhythm of that ancient village's life. Watching the movie in a cold snowy late afternoon can cause you to approach this evening dinner with some sumptuous expectations ...

The final sentence that give a title to Babette's sacrifice far from Paris: An artist is never poor.

Superb photography. Many situations depict portraits and landscapes as they were styled on canvas there, in Jutland, in 18th century.

This delicately told and moving story about the two devout daughters of a Danish Lutheran minister and their French servant is one of the finest European films of the 1980s. Set in a small, remote, austere Danish seaside town in the mid-19th century, the daughters devote their lives to continuing the work of their father in service of God, and in care for their needy townspeople. One of the daughters had turned down a promising opera career -- and the love of her French voice coach (a famous opera singer himself) -- to remain with her father and the town. Many years later the French singer sends a woman (Babette) -- who had lost her family in an outbreak of civil war -- to live with the sisters. She turns out to be an excellent cook, housekeeper and a shrewd shopper. The story culminates in a sumptuous feast prepared by Babette coinciding with a memorial to the reverend minister's 100th birthday. This delicious screenplay was adapted from the Isak Denisson (pen name for Karen Blixen) short story originally published in the Ladies Home Journal.

If you find the first 30 minutes of this film to be so slow that you wonder why you're watching it, don't give up. Also, hearing the Danish language is a bit new to most North Americans, who don't see and hear a lot of Danish films. Anyway, as the film progressed it got better and better and the viewer is rewarded for his/her patience.

Being a fan of the movie, "Out Of Africa," this film piqued my interest because it's based on a short novel by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), the major character in that film.

The meal - Babette's feast - was amazing. I'm no chef, but I was impressed! How one interprets the story, too, varies, I suppose depending on how much you read into this, and where you stand religion-wise. If the latter, how you look at the definition of "legalism" can affect how you interpret this story.

In any case, it's a fine film, but don't watch this if you're dieting.